A few weeks ago, I wrote about Tivo and Amazon's new partnership to download movies from the Internet onto Tivo devices. Since then, the service has been rolled out and I've had a chance to try it out.
Sign-up was simple. I already had an Amazon account and an online Tivo account, so all I had to do was go to Tivo's website and follow the link to Amazon's Unbox registration page. Once registration was complete, Amazon's Unbox service became aware of the two Tivo's I have. Now that I'm registered, renting or purchasing a movie or show can be done with Amazon's One-Click technology. That is, once I find a movie I want to rent, with one click of a button, the transaction is complete and the movie is automatically downloaded to my Tivo. Very nice.
One shortcoming is that Unbox's library of content is still growing, which means I can't quite get rid of my Netflix subscription yet. Another shortcoming is that the download can take up to 15 minutes to start and movies can't be watched until the entire download is complete. So it doesn't quite satisfy that impulse rental, which means I can't rule out my local video store yet, either.
Video quality was better than I expected, which was a nice surprise. Another plus is that the movie is integrated into the Tivo experience, so I don't have to switch out to another device and deal with another remote or set of controls.
I suspect the shortcomings will wither away in the next couple of years and I'll be able to rent movies on impulse, including those oldies that my wife likes. And once I can burn downloaded movies to DVD, most likely using Sonic's Qflix technology, I'll probably start buying movies from Unbox on a regular basis.